Smart Glass Maker’s Investors Get Securities Suit Lead Plaintiff

View Inc. investors who say the company misled them about warranty-cost accrual and internal control failures secured a lead plaintiff for their securities suit in federal court in California.

Investors accuse the Silicon Valley-based smart window glassmaker of failing to tell them it hadn’t properly accrued warranty costs for its product. Stadium Capital LLC will take the lead in guiding the would-be class action against View, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said.

Stadium alleged the greatest losses using a recoverable losses approach, at nearly $57,000. The competing lead plaintiff movant actually gained just over $3,000 during the class period using that formula, Judge Beth Labson Freeman’s order said.

The court “declines to follow other courts that have sought to maximize potential damages in calculating the parties’ financial stake,” Freeman said. Instead, the chosen loss calculation approach “considers only the shares retained at the time of the Corrective Disclosure, so it does not take into account losses from shares sold previously.”

The approach also “ignores the losses the parties experienced from their stocks depreciating prior to the Corrective Disclosure,” according to the Tuesday order.

Stadium meets adequacy and typicality requirements, too, Freeman said. She also approved Stadium’s choice of Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer LLP as lead counsel.

Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP represents View.

The case is Mehedi v. View Inc., 2022 BL 42601, N.D. Cal., No. 5:21-cv-06374, lead plaintiff appointed 2/8/22.